As far as end-of-year titles go, Far Cry 3 could very well be the cream of the crop. Maybe not because it's the absolute top dog in the crowd, but for its emergent possibilities and vast, open-world, there's a solid chance you'll be playing this bad boy for quite some time into the holidays.

We asked NachosJustice to get lost in the world of Jason Brody, Vaas and co on PC (to get the most out of the experience) and he walked away a changed man. Whether it was the ferociousness of the island's pirates, its myriad trip-inducing fungi, or the hot ladies involved in his quest, we're sure he's in a better place now.

most single player games involve some repetition. sure farcry2 had a whole lotta driving around in a jeep & seeing the same 3-4 guys at the same checkpoint you just cleared minutes before... but it was still a very lush looking game with great open world maps. boats with guns were cool too.. tho the mission where you had to keep repairing the barge as it got mortared from the coast was arse.

review sounds pretty promising to me... looking forward to "waking up in the jungle" :]

Far cry 2 got super repetitive and was way too front loaded. All the interesting stuff was there right from the start, and they didnt do much with it to keep you playing.

Good review, sounds like they got more meat into the gameplay this time round.

These reviews seem to be out super early, that always makes me suss on a game. Such a marketing driven decision. Did you play it at an Ubisoft review event, or did they just mail you a copy to play at home?

Often you hear people say how much they hated FC2. But it would be interesting to find out how many of these ppl actually bothered getting past Act I of the game. Sure, the game didn't grab you from the beginning, and that is a definite fault of the game...but FC2 Act 2 and Act 3 were very good and the game got stronger as it went on.

Again, ppl talk about the driving and the repetitive side missions, but many many ppl love GTA games and Assassin's Creed, which were very similar in many ways; main story mission, side mission, side mission, side mission, sandbox game activities, then main story mission again. Repeat.

Not sure how much "transparency" there is in these ppl's comments; no doubt a lot of ppl just parrot what the other non-fans of FC2 say. Maybe they just didn't like the world it was set in, ie not as many random NPCs to unnecessarily bash or shoot as in AC or GTA.

Sounds good, Was waiting for FC3 over the recently released Black Opps2 that is also getting good reviews, I am wondering if this reviewer for AUSGamers was playing the game the way it should be played, he admitted he was a run and gun playe! This review opened up another angle and had alot more detail about the world, playing Stealth etc

As a result of personal tastes or different gameplay styles, this guy gave FC3 10/10 ... Im sold, just gotta wait until the 29th now, not everyone has the benefit of getting pre-release copies :( Hope my gaming laptop can handle it, it plays Skryim just fine in Full-HD.

Hey Mooshy, in my opinion, the point of an open-world game like this is to play it the way you want to. That being said, even though I love run-and-gun gaming, I found myself using stealth and determining the best entry point to a base before heading in. I paid to get the bow early just so I could enhance my stealthy incursions; furthermore, I spent the bulk of my XP points on the stealthy takedowns (by far the best upgrades, in my opinion).

The Eurogamer reviewer lists Assassin's Creed: Brotherhood as Ubisoft's last best game, which is helpful for placing the type of games he likes. For instance, I think multiplayer was the only thing that saved Brotherhood from being critically smashed (the MP was fantastic). While I agree there is a certain amount of push and pull when it comes to reviews and personal taste definitely comes into the final score, I can't possibly agree with this game getting a 10. In the same breath, 8.5 is still a solid score and Far Cry 3 game is definitely worth the price of admission.

I have to wait til next week for my copy to get here from Dungeon Crawl. I guess they ordered their stock from the UK anyway. Oh well, I got Planetside 2 and World of tanks and crap to keep occupied with.

Yeah I'm gonna side with steve on this one. I really enjoyed FC2, still on the hard drive. Appeals to some pseudo military thing i guess. The missions were all the same but if you enjoy stormin the castle why f*** with the formula?

To me, FC2 was more like, "Hey! We made this GREAT large map! Gameplay.....errrrr..... did you see our map?" It lost me very early on. FC1 was open, yet linear, it dragged you through the map but let you do what you wanted mostly as you went.

Must say I really loved the game. A high point for me was burning a crop of marijuana and Skrillex & Damian "Jr Gong" Marley - "Make It Bun Dem" comes on. Never has a song felt more in tune with the game for me. Was such an awesome moment.

Pretty awesome looking game to begin with but after adding the sweetfx injector that I use for every game, it looks even better now. I switched from Dx11 to Dx9 and got a massive fps boost too of around 20 fps even after going from high to ultra settings. With my injector too the game looks just as awesome without losing anything noticeable.

EDIT - and now my saved game has been wiped somehow. F*** playing another 12+ hours to get back where I was. Uninstall.

It would be a little more interesting if the pirate guys tried to take back camps that you have taken over. So far you only find pirates in their own territory or a couple of randoms in areas you have taken. I find weapons too easy to get, a RPK machine gun should cost a heck of a lot more then 2.5k or whatever it is, Especially on a remote island in the pacific. I don't like the fact you also get free weapons when you take over towers. This all make the game a little too easy and console like. Maybe there will be mods to improve it later on. Aside from those grips its still a solid game, Developers need to harden the frack up.

haha yeah BladeRunner, I went on a radio tower spree early on so I'm probably 1/3 to 1/2 of the of the way through the story and I've got most weapons, pretty much all are are free. I've upgraded the wallet fully and most other items so now I have money, gear and ammo out the wazoo.

PVP:
- Fixed some issues with user created maps when more than 8 players were playing them.
- Improved matchmaking for both Multiplayer and Co-op modes.
- Improved team balancing when playing in party.
- Fixed issues with Live balancing patch system.

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Single Player fixes for the patch:
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- Fixed issue where players fall through the world when not connected to the Ubisoft servers.
- Fixed the "View Leaderboard" and "Start Trial" buttons in the World Map.
- Improved stability when quitting to desktop.
- Fixed issue with leaderboards.

It would be a little more interesting if the pirate guys tried to take back camps that you have taken over. So far you only find pirates in their own territory or a couple of randoms in areas you have taken. I find weapons too easy to get, a RPK machine gun should cost a heck of a lot more then 2.5k or whatever it is, Especially on a remote island in the pacific. I don't like the fact you also get free weapons when you take over towers. This all make the game a little too easy and console like. Maybe there will be mods to improve it later on. Aside from those grips its still a solid game, Developers need to harden the frack up.

This somewhat, but wait until you get to the harder parts of the game, really you should be playing on the hardest difficulty to get the most of it. LOOK for letters and relics and BUY ITEM MAPS, buying guns is pointless until you get the unique weapons you unlock from finding relics and letters etc.. There is a sniper rifle you get from finding the jap war letters and its just a beast, there are parts of the game where i though wow if i didnt have this it would be a total f*** around to get through this part.

haha yeah BladeRunner, I went on a radio tower spree early on so I'm probably 1/3 to 1/2 of the of the way through the story and I've got most weapons, pretty much all are are free. I've upgraded the wallet fully and most other items so now I have money, gear and ammo out the wazoo.

I did this also. You will find that you can only unlock the top half of the island by doing this until you finish more of the story, it wont let you get on a boat and head south (out of bounds warning, like redzone running in BF3)

Im currently according to my handbook 46% through the game and im up to the part where i just rescued the blonde guy from the convoy. I have every radio tower open on the top half of the map and only 1 or 2 enemy outposts left. I have a s***load of relics, letters and SD cards.

My friend finished this game in 1 day and I was like man wtf?? You are missing all the totally cool s*** in the game and all he did was the story missions without doing anything else, infact he said he got through the whole game just by unlocking 2 or 3 radio towers and said it was extremely hard to do and the only way he got guns was by picking up enemy weapons.. I disagree with playing farcry 3 like this, the single player game can easily be a 100+ hour game if you do it the right way.

Coolest part so far imo is burning the weed fields mission, that dubstep song that comes on is totally suitable for that part of the game, gave me goosebumps actually. Awesome.

the single player game can easily be a 100+ hour game if you do it the right way.

I spent about 90 minutes trying to take over a single outpost last night without being detected (with lots of savegame reloading) to get the bonus XP. Throwing rocks to lure a single enemy out of the base or to get them to face another direction, doing takedown+hide combos to get rid of bodies, uncaging the in-base animal (shouldn't do this too early!), trying to stop the nearby patrols and wild animals from interfering.

If one finishes this game in one day, then COD N+1 is probably a better choice in the future.

Also I accidentally drove into my allies, and then they turned and started shooting me (showing up as Red enemies on the map), calling me a traitor. Does anyone know if they permanently turn?

You will find that you can only unlock the top half of the island by doing this until you finish more of the story

Yeah I noticed, at first the position I launched my boat made me think I might be cutting the corner one of the map squares, but nah it's just plain out of bounds.

The outposts are great to take over as every one is different. I cleared out the radio towers in one hit early on, a couple of outposts and then some of the more important path of the hunter quests (shark hunting with the recurve was a tough mofo). After that, because I had the entire map I cleared out I just kept doing all the outposts.I only really switched back to the storyline because I got sad that I couldn't do more outpost takeovers until I unlock the lower island. Until then all the POIs that I can't get to are just taunting me.

Also, you're right, the weed fields mission was awesome. I loved the attention to detail where if you're standing in the middle of an untorched weed field the POV goes slightly fuzzy. :D

I spent about 90 minutes trying to take over a single outpost last night without being detected

I've only ever done this once or twice out of about 20ish? outposts, but I felt like a f*****g boss when the plan came together.The rest of the time I just camera tag everyone, sneak in & disable the alarm, stab the closest couple of dudes and then just go Rambo with the rest when no reinforcements are on the way heh. I learned early on that if you don't kill the alarms a bunch more dudes descend and unless you're holed up somewhere it's guaranteed you're going to have a bad time. Once I managed to disable the alarm just as a pair of dogs jumped on me and alerted everyone. I have no idea how I survived, only because of complete lucky bulls***.

this game is really a lot of fun and great value for money.
8.5 is probably the right score for it, shame about the COD/Halo/hype-advertisements of the world that make it seem weak, especially given the review had only a single paragraph detailing faults.

I was hoping to see more of a crazy altered mind type things. Like where you go into that cave. Would be cool to actually harvest weed and/or make illicit drugs to sell, even if it does not use real names. Fighting while under the influence of drugs in game would be interesting indeed, Crazy looking animals and strange things.

Have just finished the game completing a lot of the side challenges - def worth the money. Freed all the outposts - unlocked all the towers - did some of the hunting and assassination quests. Now I'm back at free roam and I'm going to tackle some more of the hunting challenges and random quests around the island.

I am going to jump on the boat and agree with a few people - it did seem a tad easy obtaining extreme weaponry.

Don't read this if you haven't finished the game!

Spoiler:The ending was thoroughly disappointing - both options left so many loose ends it's not funny - it really did seem rushed. I was left feeling 'Well - what happened to EVERYONE except me?' The last press space bar to win boss battle made zero sense... room full of guards - mid poker game - all of a sudden random drug trip with just him and all the guards are dead? What? How did that happen? towards the end Denis was also an entirely different character... I'm all for characters evolving but what the hell happened to him? The rushed ending really soured the experience for me after such an awesome experience getting there. Anyone else feel the same way?

Sam near the end "I have a knife hidden in my boot"look at his character and there is a huge knife on his chest.And the "bad ending" choice was pretty silly, in terms of "story" i dont see why you would take it, especially when eariler on you told your GF to get on the boat and leave because you were staying.

Denis was also an entirely different character

No he was set up as a nut obsessed with citra a bit earlier when he was drunk.I googled the bad ending though, lol.

And the "bad ending" choice was pretty silly, in terms of "story" i dont see why you would take it, especially when eariler on you told your GF to get on the boat and leave because you were staying.

Spoiler:I found that according to the story it would only make sense to slit her throat.

In fact I was very disappointing they didn't use the drug sequences to do it. I was expecting, ever since the first drug sequence, to be captured and get drugged. Fighting enemies on the way out using the quicktime like battle, whilst being taunted relentlessly by Hoyt, getting you angrier and angrier. After killing about 10 enemies you finally attack Hoyt and kill him viciously whilst laughing hysterically and enjoying it all. Then you pass out, only to wake up and find you killed your GF whilst drugged.

At this point you fully lose the plot and blame everything on Hoyt, giving up nothing to kill him in vengence. Afterwards you are still angry and totally lost the plot at being a hard killer and go after the one that sent you on this path, Citra.

She then informs you of her plan and you decide where to go. The natural progression would be to kill her along with you. I'm not sure how the story would work to go with her plan though. Either way you should die at the end.

So I got around to actually buying the game. Spent the afternoon installing and when I try to load up the game uplay starts. Huh... that's pretty s***. Since I already had a uplay account from when they were selling games that cost $0 for a few hours (and have the awesome automatic name of shop28F06BD8F that I can't change) I put my key in and was ready to play. That is until the game crashed on start up because the dx11 mode is f***ed.

So I try loading the plain FC3.exe and it brings up uplay again but this time saying I don't have FC3 as part of my gaming library. The f***? If I want to run the game I have to start it in steam, to start uplay which then tells it I own the f*****g thing. After starting the game up in safe mode and switching over to dx9 it still seems to crash on start up giving me a dx11.exe error when I don't want to run that one. Yeah so glad I supported Ubisoft now. Never again. F*** their uplay crap. This is 1 of the reason pirates exist.

EDIT - I had to rename the .exe files to force it to use the dx9 one and now things are working. This is hardly something I should have to do because they refuse to use steamworks and want to use their s***** uplay bulls***. Sorry, in a real pissed off mood because of this when all I wanted to do was support a game I actually enjoyed.

Yeah all that you've said makes sense in terms of the story but this last bit doesn't in terms of the game. (FC3 excels at this it seems) Also, they tried death of the player with Fallout 3 and it bombed badly. Dying at the end meant you couldn't logically continue and explore the landscape further and they had to retcon in order to make the DLC work correctly.

fwiw: I chose the good ending, because Citra's character seemed to go wacky at the end and it made me annoyed at the story writers for not foreshadowing it better or coming up with something that felt like she was still in character. I youtubed the other ending and basically to me it came down to boobs with guilt.Did I want to avoid my friends blood on my hands, or did I want to sneak one final peek at cartoony tits?

Not that I really want to stick up for Ubisoft and their Uplay nonsense, cos its pretty gay, but its actually worked flawlessly for me since I got the game, and the game as well, hasn't crashed for me or anything. After hearing so many reports of crashes and Uplay f*****g up I was expecting the worse, but I've been pleasantly suprised.

Bit of a sad state of affairs when I'm actually suprised and impressed that a PC game works and doesn't crash all the time though.